Wednesday, February 6, 2013

I finally decided to buy my first large scale doll and I ended up choosing Nagato. This won't be a full review, but more of an image dump with my thoughts about her. I'm also trying out a couple of new setups for taking pictures, so you'll see some duplicate poses in different backgrounds and lighting. Tell me which one looks better since I suck at photography.

Nagato can stand on her own, but it doesn't feel stable. In the top left picture, you'll notice that her cardigan isn't worn properly. The cardigan shifts out of position easily and it's pretty annoying.

Taking pictures of Nagato's face was a bit of a challenge. It might just be my nitpicking, but it was difficult to snap a shot that looked good. When I looked at her in person she looks fine, but looking at the photo version made her look slightly strange. It was probably my lack of skill.

Nagato appears to be wearing a very slight smile. Is it my imagination?

Unfortunately, her hair doesn't have that jagged, messy look like she's supposed to have. Ironically, it actually looks straight and tidy.

When I move side to side to look at her face, it looks like her eyes are following me.

The cardigan's sleeves are a bit too long for Nagato. That's not necessarily a bad thing. I think it makes her look cuter. Underneath the cardigan is the North High winter uniform. There's a zipper on the side of the skirt that sticks out, but the cardigan covers it when Nagato is wearing it.

She only comes with 3 hands. Yes, three. The two you see in the picture above and one extra to hold Star Ring Inferno from Volk's evil witch costume. I looked around several places for it, but I couldn't find one.

The socks was easily the most difficult piece of clothing to put on Nagato. I felt like I was putting it on incorrectly because getting her heel through to the end of the sock was a struggle.

The shoes have no traction and I don't like how the black part sticks out.

The box is the standard one from Volks with some stickers to indicate it's Nagato's.

I included a picture of Nagato sitting beside a figma box and a music CD for size comparison.

I said a lot of negative things in the review, but I'm completely satisfied with my purchase. I'm even tempted to buy another doll, possibly one from Azone's 50cm line. I actually saw Azone's 1/3 scale Nagato on Yahoo Auctions a couple of days ago and made a fairly large bid on it through my proxy. Unfortunately, someone else beat my bid for her. Oh well, the main reason I wanted Azone Nagato was so I could buy glasses for one of them and have her be "human" Nagato. Maybe another one will pop up in the future.

One thing that I forgot to mention is that Nagato doesn't come with a bra. However, she does come with panties. I thought about buying some clothing for her along with some undergarments, but Nagato chooses to wear her school uniform the majority of the time, so maybe I should just stick with it.